The Geo-Institute Board of Governors has nominated Sissy Nikolaou, Ph.D, P.E., F.ASCE to join the G-I Board for a term beginning in October 2017.
Dr. Nikolaou is currently Principal in the Geotechnical & Tunneling Technical Excellence Center of WSP USA. She has more than 20 years of worldwide experience, and her technical capabilities range from geotechnical to structural engineering, with emphasis on performance-based design, soil-structure interaction, liquefaction assessment and mitigation, and risk evaluation.

Dr. Nikolaou has held leadership board positions with both the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and Applied Technology Council (ATC). A FEMA search and rescue specialist, Sissy has participated in reconnaissance and recovery missions after disasters including the September 11th, 2001 attacks, Hurricane Sandy, and several earthquakes. Within ASCE, she currently serves on the G-I Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics Technical Committee and ASCE’s Critical Infrastructure and Lifeline Systems Committee of the Infrastructure Resiliency Division.
Nikolaou was named a Fellow of ASCE in 2016. She was a participant in the 2016 White House Earthquake Resilience Summit. She was awarded the Prakash Prize for Excellence in Geotechnical Engineering in 2004 – the youngest and first female winner. Sissy hopes to use her position on the G-I Board of Governors to get younger generations excited about geotechnical engineering. She gives talks encouraging women to follow STEM careers and has developed fun, interactive engineering programs for students and their families. She enjoys mentoring younger engineers as a way to show gratitude to those who mentored her. Nikolaou received a Civil Engineering Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece, and her MSc and PhD degrees in geotechnical engineering and risk analysis from the University at Buffalo.

Petition Candidacy for the Board of Governors

At this time, any G-I member wishing to serve or nominate another member has 45 days to declare a petition candidate.
To add candidates to the ballot via petition, signatures expressing support for a candidate must be obtained from a minimum of 150 GI members in good standing with the following distribution requirements:

• At least fifteen signatures shall be obtained from each of at least five different ASCE Geographic Regions for a total of 75 signatures from five of the ten ASCE Geographic Regions (i.e., 15 signatures/region x 5 regions = 75 signatures).
• The balance of the remaining signatures necessary to reach the minimum requirement of 150 may be obtained without consideration of ASCE Geographic Region distribution. The Geo-Institute Member Identification number shall be provided for each signee. G-I staff shall check the validity of all petitions. Once verified, the candidate(s) shall be added to the ballot. No petitions will be accepted after the specified deadline has passed.

For more information on the Board’s nomination process and how to nominate a petition candidate, see the Geo-Institute Policies and Procedures document.